US Lab Developing Technology For Space Traffic Control 47
coondoggie writes "Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory say they have tested technology that could eventually help them monitor and control space traffic. The driving idea behind the project is to help keep satellites and other spacecraft from colliding with each other or with debris in Low Earth Orbit."
Already Have the Technology (Score:1)
NRL [navy.mil] has had this technology since 1957.
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Are you serious?
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Sure, all it takes is a bunch of warp drive fields that can locally modify the universal gravitational constant, cancel inertia, and redirect those missiles back to their point of origin. Geordi LaForge does it all of the time to help prevent violations of various interstellar treaties or major plot points that are otherwise unsolvable.
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he died because he didn't want to spend any more time with Sandra Bullock...
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Re: Extremely important project (Score:1)
It's a shit movie anyways.
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It's a great movie. Definitely in my top 1 Billion American movies which were released last year.
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I didn't spoil anything, dickwad. I did not say which character dies in the end and in American movies you can pretty much guarantee that multiple people are going to die since the people who control the movie industry in America are obsessed with violence, death and destruction.
What is a "ground-based satellite"? (Score:2)
I thought calling something a satellite meant it was orbiting.
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They mean a satellite being tested on the ground before launching it.
If that were the case, then expressions like "building a satellite" would be wrong.
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You may build something with the intention of making it become a satellite by placing it in orbit. but until it is in orbit, it is not a satellite.
Trust Me! (Score:2)
Who's gonna do it? You?
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So society needs people with guns to continue, hmm you must be an american.
What country doesn't have a standing army, or is not a protectorate of one that does? Any you'd care to live in? Hmm, you must be a naive idealist. I wish this were not the case, but we can't put that genie back in the bottle. How well did not having an army work out for Tibet?
Son, We live in a world where a group of people think they are the world police and have decided you have no rights, no privacy and point guns at you saying it for your own safety, Avoid them.
Son, we live in a world where no country give a rats ass about privacy. Do I think it's right? Fuck no. Any country of sufficient size and economic standing spies on everyone they can. The US happened to put a lot more effort into it
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I'm from NZ :), we have no standing army to speak of and we are working on digital privacy, our personal privacy isn't to bad either at least to be detained their has to be at least reasonable cause. (and once we stop spying for the US on US citizens (because its illegal for them to do it) we should be good for anti spy)
oh and our police don't carry guns and the majority of people don't own a gun, not because of tight gun controls its because we don't need one.
Maybe we should change our motto to land of the
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New Zealand Army: Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], Home Page [army.mil.nz]
Search "new zealand armed forces": Results [disconnect.me]
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You also realize that NZ is protected under the ANZUS treaty [wikipedia.org]. Basically if New Zealand was to be seriously threatened by an invasion from another country, the whole bloody U.S. Marine Corps would be dropping onto whatever offensive was actually taking place (along with the rest of the U.S. Armed Forces).
Yes, I accept your thanks on behalf of my countrymen.
I don't mind the arrangement either, but don't go pretending that 7k people are sufficient for a proper defense by a determined enemy who wants to kick y
ground-based satellite? (Score:2)
TFA says:
a series of six images over a 60-hour period taken from a ground-based satellite
I wonder what a "ground-based satellite" satellite is. Do they meant a telescope?
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The only thing I could think of that would fit that title would be something we haven't built yet:
A Beanstalk
A Skyhook
A Clarke Tower
An Orbital Tower
A space elevator
I think the last term would be the one most /. readers would be familiar with, they are all names for the same obital construct
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they are all names for the same orbital construct
Not quite. Yes, they're all names for the basic idea, but there are several applications of a beanstalk that don't require an elevator. The term "space elevator" applies to a subset of the various suggested technologies. Also, a skyhook doesn't have to be anchored at the base, there have been several suggestions for rotating tethers which dip down into the atmosphere and grab payloads at their nadir.
A couple of decades back I published a paper or two on
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Actually a skyhook is usually understood as something different from the others - a vertical or tumbling tether arrangement, not something connected to the ground nor necessarily geosynchronous.
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TFA says:
a series of six images over a 60-hour period taken from a ground-based satellite
I wonder what a "ground-based satellite" satellite is. Do they meant a telescope?
It’s a geostationary object at an altitude of 0 km.
You know, like a brick.
Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
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They are developing software to get better orbital trajectories. We already HAVE software that manages traffic and orbital collision warnings, but the problem is that our orbital trajectory data is too inaccurate for it to be as helpful as it should be.
technology that could eventually help them monitor and control space traffic.
Yeah... right... control space traffic... my as.. (no, scratch that: Uranus)... they can barely do it for airspace, almost nothing for LEO and they dream of "space"?
(sensationalism at its best in reporting)
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Well, controlling space vs air traffic are fairly different problems. Obviously both involve conflict resolution, but space traffic has some factors that make it both easier and harder.
Space traffic tends to maintain an unchanged ballistic trajectory for a very long period of time (days, weeks, months, years). Air traffic tends not to stay in the air for more than a few hours at a time. Air traffic is easy to maneuver - changing course costs very little compared to maintaining course, but space traffic c
So Let Me Get This Straight (Score:3)
Kind of like airports do with air traffic controllers...
Man, I wonder how aggressive the Space TSA will be?
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Man, I wonder how aggressive the Space TSA will be?
What? This is unacceptable! How can you not know this? You've got it backwards: The TSA came after the alien abduction leaks.
I'm filing a formal complaint with your Cultural Indoctrination & Acclimation overseers.
Ground Control to Major Tom (Score:2)
I can't bloody believe this wasn't the headline. Sheesh! You guys are slipping.
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Serious Problem ... (Score:2)
And satellites do collide
There always has been the issue of how much orbiting space junk will finally start causing serious problems for space flight and the flight paths of other satellites, I think this issue has been a concern for so long that Carl Sagan was worrying about it (and it'll be 20 years since his death this year).
pffft (Score:1)
The cart before the horse? (Score:2)
This is like putting up traffic lights before you have more than two cars.
This is all about satellites and debris -- so what about the equivalent of "street sweepers" for the sky? I could imagine that it's easier to target all the working satellites and occasionally just blast the equivalent of a shotgun around them of pellets made from water ice. Destabilize the orbit of all the debris and it will clean up quicker.
Other than a few satellites that might collide -- most of the debris or low sophistication sa
Simple solution (Score:2)
Just limit space travel to Google Self-Driving Spaceships.
WCPGW, YMMV, etc.